I’ve never studied the massive piles of evidence supporting the Germ Theory of Disease but I do trust the textbook explanations I learned in science class. (The classic experiments support a high confidence levels and I have no reason to personally examine them to reach my conclusion.) I didn’t personally examine the data supporting Maxwell’s equations which provide a foundation for classical electromagnetism and optics—but I have indeed found Maxwell’s equations to be solid science. My conclusions on the validity of Einstein’s relativity theories did not depend upon my personally studying the data collected during the famous solar eclipse experiment when Einstein’s predictions about the warping of space around the sun (which changed the measured position of a star) were confirmed. I nevertheless consider them solid conclusions.
What you are doing is known as selective hand-waving. It is an argument fallacy which is no substantive argument at all. It applies bizarre demands on peer-reviewed science, especially when the conclusions conflict with the skeptic’s religious positions and personal biases. (Meanwhile, the person places no such high demands on their own conclusions concerning countless other realities.)
My experience has been that under such circumstances no amount of evidence will be deemed sufficient—and most of it will be ignored, even while new arguments (equally tangential and unsubstantive) will be posted.
It’s a standard ID-Creationist tactic on discussion boards. if you don’t commit to an answer your claims can’t be pinned down and refuted. Bill has spent several years honing his skills.
Allen 4 years ago I assumed this theory is true and would have said I believe that all cats share a common ancestor. There is a big problem with this theory which is that transitions require lots of functional information. Information lives in very large sequence space. Random change breaks down sequences. To test this make random changes to someones phone number and see what happens. All the sciences you mentioned have models that can be tested. Evolution does not.
Why?
It proposes that it can make progress with a trial and error process through a sequence. No one has been able to model this as it would require very special conditions to work.
There is a fundamental mathematical problem with this theory. The ID guys do have a strong argument.
This is why Tim is pushing for a burden shift.
At this point I am open but skeptical to all evolutionary claims that have not been tested. I believe that bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics but as far as common descent between species I want to see a real tested hypothesis. Tim with all his hand waving cannot produce one.
Non-intelligent evolutionary processes can produce an unlimited amount of new functional information. Bill will deny this until he’s blue in the face but it won’t change the empirically observed fact.
Even YECs say tigers and housecats are descended through by common ancestry from the cat “kind” but Bill won’t even commit to that. Apparently the huge amount of genetic and morphological evidence we have just isn’t enough for hyper-skeptic Bill. He needs a time machine so he can witness the common ancestor in person.
I feel no scientist should ever use the term “blind and mindless” when talking about any scientific process. It’s not technically meaningful language. You could describe any regularity in nature as “blind and mindless”. Science doesn’t study intention or minds.
I would see how many endogenous retroviruses are shared between the two species out of the total number of endogenous retroviruses found in each genome.
No, at PS the position is that we don’t know if evolution is run by God. And we are reasonably convinced that Evolution describes how life on Earth works.
Two sides of the same coin. Science is silent on the matter and we take many personal views, all dignified when we are honest with what science is telling us.
